a death in the family

My aunt died last night.  This was Fourth Aunt on my mother's side, the aunt to whom I refer to as my "French aunt," because while most of my extended family made a bee-line for the US after fleeing Vietnam, Fourth Uncle and his family went instead to France.  And while her death wasn't a complete surprise -- she had been treated for cancer in the last year -- it's suddenness still caught everyone by surprise.

Because of the distance, I'm not as familiar with my Fourth Aunt and Uncle, as I am with the rest of my mother's relations.  In fact, I'd only met her three times, and each time, it was a navigation between three languages:  English, French and Vietnamese.  My French is poor, my Vietnamese even poorer, but during our last interaction, when she and my uncle came to visit the US, we managed to cobble together a conversation about French books and French authors. They gave Matthew and me a gift of a bottle of Sauternes (half drunk) and tins of foie gras (which we kept in our kitchen cabinet until they went bad and leaked oil). 

I received the news by email last night, but I didn't learn about her death until this afternoon.  Or, slightly rephrased, I received an email last night, but didn't understand it until today.  When I first saw the email, I thought it was a piece of spam that had somehow found its way into my work account at school.  The subject line read:  Tata Loan, and my initial reaction was to ask, "What's this about a car loan?"  Of course, I had thought "Tata" referred to the Indian car line, and since I had just spoken with my mother the night before about swapping cars, this is where my mind immediately went.  I didn't know Tata had already introduced its line of cars into the US, I thought.  But when I opened the email, it became apparent that the subject line referred to my aunt, Loan, and that I had missed the connection.

When people read, they oftentimes sub-vocalize.  But for Vietnamese, I have to go all the way to full vocalization.  As I attempt to read Vietnamese, I twist each word around on my tongue until to approaches something appropriate to the context.  I practice the different modulations of vowels until the word matches something familiar.  Thus, reading Vietnamese is a laborious process.  From my conversation with my mother the other night (the same conversation in which we discussed cars), she told me that Tata (a familial Vietnamese word for "aunt") had developed complications, which made her coughing up blood.  I thought this email was related to that conversation.  I put it aside.

I've got a small collection of notes my mother has sent me.  Handwritten notes, on scraps of translucent paper or long, oblong Post-Its featuring the mascot of the school my father used to teach out, Kunsmiller Middle School.  She writes them in Vietnamese, and half the time, I try to parse them, and the other half, I don't even bother.  I wonder if sometimes she mistakes me for my brother (as she sometimes does on the phone), who is more fluent than I am.  But these notes are usually included with birthday or Christmas checks, or when I've forgotten to balance my checkbook and have overdrawn again. 

But this afternoon, my cousin (from Sixth Aunt) called Matthew to tell him that Tata Loan had indeed died, and that was the content of the above email.  An odd transmission route of information:  I should have known earlier -- late last night, as a matter of fact -- but my inability to read meant that I had become the last person to know.  Even Matthew knew before I did, if only by a few seconds.  He had that stricken look, as if bad news intensifies geometrically as its passed from person to person.

A few minutes ago, I tried to read my mother's original email:  Các con, Tata Loan mới mất cách đây chùng 2 tiếng đồng hồ tại Bordeaux.

Các con: All my children. 
Tata Loan: now a proper name, rather than an offer. 
mới mất cách đây:  was just lost
chùng 2 tiếng đồng hồ tại Bordeaux:  around 2 o'clock, in Bordeaux. 


The letter contines, but I can't read it.  Not because I can't, but because I can't. 

Reading: Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Two African-American ladies in the audience cheered and applauded when Thiong'o mentioned Marcus Garvey.  Old radicals, I imagine.  Righteous.  We post-colonialists need to stick together. 

Ngugi wa Thiong'o reads more like a poet than a prose writer.  He selected a number of shorter excerpts from his memoir and linked them with reminisces and digressions.  He reminded me of an old English professor, delivering a lecture, but the deeper he goes into the material, the more he recalls scenes from his own life that coalesce off the page.  When a questioner asked about his reaction to the death of South African poet Dennis Brutus, Thiong'o recalled a story in which he and his wife were travelling with Brutus.  Thiong'o's wife went through without a problem, but Thiong'o and Brutus were held back.  Thiong'o was soon released, but as time passed, they began to worry about Brutus.  Eventually, they saw Brutus walking towards them, waving a sheet of paper.  "Look," Brutus said.  "I wrote a poem."

Reading: Adam Haslett and Sam Lipsyte

Two hot young writers reading from their hot new novels.  I'm feeling not so hot at all, on the tail end of a cold.  For my "welcome back taste buds" meal:  pho. 

The audience seemed particularly keen on process questions:  how long did it take you to write your novel?  (5 years)  What's the difference between writing a novel and writing short stories?  (Length)  Is your work fiction or non-fiction.  (Fiction).  I wondered if the young woman who asked that last question had accidentally stumbled into the reading.  Adam, incidentally, is repped by Ira Silverberg, with whom I have a secret love affair.   

It occurred to me that many of the questioners -- most likely many of the attendees -- were aspiring writers themselves.  There were a handful of the older Philly literati who were drawn to this reading perhaps from Adam's appearance on the Today Show Book Club, but also a large number of late 20s/early 30s hipsters.  Also:  the occasional homo.  And my signing friend, Matt, who brought his son.

But when it came to question and answer time, one gentleman in the front kept needling Sam about studying with Gordon Lish.  What's the one piece of take home advice you learned from Lish or that you teach to your students at Columbia?  Both Sam and Adam gave the same approximate advice:  listen to your sentences.  Later, he had asked another Lish-related question:  what's the one piece of advice from Lish that you've had to forget or ignore?  And Sam, after relating the oft-told tale of Lish stopping students, mid-sentence, to tell them why they were fraudulent, said, "I've had to learn to let go of the fear."  The questioner revealed that he, too, had gotten a Master's in creative writing.

I think all young writers want the one-line answer to make writing seem that much easier.  The one piece of advice that makes everything snap into place. The truth of the matter is, however...

My post-reading, "welcome back taste buds" dessert:  star fruit and tart lime gelato from Capogiro.

Reading: John Banville

 

Nothing will keep me from readings:  not 4" of snow on the ground, not a boyfriend sick in bed with the stomach flu, not a $14 entrance fee (mitigated by half using the "I'm a student" feint), not sheer laziness (most of the time).  These things will, however, make me late.  By about 15 minutes.  

Banville has a very even, very steady voice.  You can imagine him doing his own book on tape, though you might have to adjust the volume up.  he reminds me of a professor whom you wish would use a microphone, but would lean forward to hear anyway.  There was a microphone here, however, so I could sit back at my leisure.  What is it about an Irish accent that makes a voice so compelling?  Banville's work is already lyrical in itself, so that slight inflection makes the words sing even stronger.  He kept running his right hand against the corner of the podium, as if scratching his palm against the wood. 

During the Q&A, he established his position on the literary arts:  there's verse, there's prose, and there's poetry; the last can be found in both of the former.  And, with the skill of a Olympic badminton player, he batted away repeated questions about the work of Hermann Broch gently, even as the questioner continued trying to inject.  "How many others have read Hermann Broch?" he asked.  One man raised his hand.  "Great," Banville said, with faux exasperation, "another one."